In comparison, vaccination centres offering shots made by the Chinese company Sinovac have reported few takers and people not showing up for appointments, resulting in a surplus of vaccines at the end of each day.

Dr Anthony Leachon, a former senior adviser to the country’s Covid-19 task force, said: “I think it’s the track record of [American drug companies] for producing quality medicines proven for efficacy and safety. Their product is a result of excellent research and development.”

According to ABS-CBN News, the Philippines has 5.5 million Sinovac jabs, 2.5 million AstraZeneca doses, and 193,000 Pfizer shots.

Officials have previously estimated the country, population 110 million, needs to vaccinate at least 70 million to achieve herd immunity. However, ABS-CBN News reported the target was revised down this month to 58 million.

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The country’s vaccination programme started on March 1. According to figures compiled by ABS-CBN news, as of May 24 only 986,929 Filipinos had been immunised.

Under the current set up, local governments administer vaccines according to a hierarchy that prioritises health workers, people with comorbidities, the elderly, indigents and uniformed personnel. Those eligible can sign up and book appointments either using an app or by filling out a paper form. Before Duterte’s intervention, applicants could pick the vaccines they wanted by skipping days when the brand they wanted was not available.

Now people will not be told what brand of vaccine is being used until they are at the centre, at which point they could still refuse but would need to rebook.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Tuesday that while health workers would be allowed to choose what vaccine they received, senior citizens and those with comorbidities would have to go “back to the end of the line – that’s only fair”.

Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the WHO representative to the Philippines, called it “a step in the right direction because this will help us to manage these kinds of superspreader events from happening and will also encourage people to accept the vaccines that are being rolled out”.

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Other officials said that all vaccines were effective and that the most important thing was to get immunised as quickly as possible.

But some observers said the “brand agnostic” policy might backfire for two reasons.

First, thousands of Filipinos who returned from working overseas because of the pandemic might not be able to go back because their host countries will require vaccination passports and Chinese vaccines might not be accepted.

Senator Christopher “Bong” Go said on May 25 in the senate that “some OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] are hesitant to get vaccinated because some countries require a specific brand, although our vaccines at hand are proven safe and effective”.

“Many OFWs cannot leave the country because the host countries have preferences for Western brands of vaccines. They are being discriminated against.”

He said that “if possible, we should allocate a vaccine that is suitable for them and is acceptable in countries of their destination”.

The second problem is that most Filipinos are already reluctant to get inoculated.

On May 20, survey group Social Weather Stations revealed that only 32 per cent of adult Filipinos were willing to be vaccinated. Two months before that, a poll by Pulse Asia showed that 61 per cent of respondents would reject being jabbed.

The non-governmental organisation OCTA Research Group said on May 25 that vaccine hesitancy made it doubtful the Philippines would achieve herd immunity this year.

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian told ABS-CBN News on May 25 that the ban would “not help overcome fear. It will aggravate fear among our constituents”.

He said his constituents did “their own homework and … depriving them of the brand in advance might create this notion of uncertainty and that will not help them in terms of building confidence”.

He said not giving people a choice was “a problem inherent with ordering from multiple suppliers – the public should have the choice what vaccine to get, but there should be a balance between preference and availability of preferred brand, to reach herd immunity the soonest”.

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‘Virus hunters’ in the Philippines study bats to prevent future pandemics

‘Virus hunters’ in the Philippines study bats to prevent future pandemics

Leachon said the Philippines was already “a laggard in vaccination in Asia”, plagued by “high vaccine hesitancy due to wrong information, a lack of safe and accessible vaccination sites and health care workers”.

Ironically it was under the Duterte administration that Philippine vaccine confidence fell. As recently as 2015, some 93 per cent of Filipinos surveyed for the Global Vaccine Index agreed that vaccines were important.

It is likely that a series of congressional hearings in 2019 on the Dengvaxia dengue vaccine played a role in destroying this confidence. In 2015 the government of President Benigno Aquino Jr had started a multibillion-peso public health campaign against dengue using the vaccine Dengvaxia, made by the French drug company Sanofi. In 2017, when Duterte had been in office for one year, the company suddenly announced Dengvaxia could be dangerous to people who had never had dengue before. This provoked outrage and investigations in both houses of Congress, which heard unsubstantiated claims of children dying and public health officials getting kickbacks.

On Tuesday Gatchalian said the most important thing was “to allay the fears”.

He told ANC News Channel that “my simple strategy for that is for the leaders to come out and promote vaccination. Our president, vice-president, senate president, even speaker of the house, and even media personalities”.

Meanwhile, authorities said they were investigating the emergence of a black market where unused vaccination slots were being offered for sale on Facebook.